EDITORIAL: Cincy better get it in gear with bike transportation

Competing Midwest cities have a leg up

Aug. 19, 2013

Cincinnati is steadily making improvements to its biking infrastructure. / Enquirer file photo

Monday, Aug. 12, 2013 Gordy Henrey heads home from his job in Over-The-Rhine, Monday afternoon. Henrey rides his bike each day from his home in Newport, Kentucky. His route home takes him down Vine Street to Central Parkway. He moves into the left lane to make a turn onto Race Street. From there, he heads to the Purple People Bridge and on into Newport and home. The Enquirer/ Liz Dufour / The Enquirer

Location

2011 Rank by Bicycling magazine

2011 Commuters

1990 to 2011 Change

United States

0.56%

37%

70 large city average

1.08%

78%

Portland, Ore.

1

6.3%

443%

Seattle

2

3.5%

128%

San Francisco

3

3.4%

258%

Minneapolis

4

3.4%

108%

Washington, D.C.

5

3.2%

315%

Lexington-Fayette County

12

1.8%

435%

Chicago

17

1.4%

400%

Pittsburgh

18

1.4%

235%

Cleveland

39

0.6%

387%

Columbus

41

0.5%

42%

Indianapolis

43

0.5%

175%

Toledo

44

0.4%

245%

Memphis, Tenn.

51

0.4%

198%

Cincinnati

53

0.4%

76%

St. Louis

56

0.3%

20%

Louisville-Jefferson County

60

0.3%

50%

More

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The Little Miami Scenic Trail is a gem of a bike trail, packed on weekends and busy even midweek. But unless people live in Milford and work in Loveland, they’re using it primarily for recreation, often arriving at the trail with bikes strapped to their cars.

Now, as more people adopt bikes as a way to exercise and have fun, many cities are trying to push bikes to another level, encouraging their use for commuting, shopping and other errands.

Using bikes as transportation has a long list of benefits: it reduces traffic congestion, cuts air pollution, makes people healthier, and saves money on gas and car repair.

There’s even evidence that people on bikes buy more from their local businesses than drivers do, because they can better see the goods and services for sale.

Building an infrastructure that promotes biking as a way to get around can also help cities attract the kind of talent they’re all vying for: young, mobile, and concerned about fitness and the environment.

This summer, two cities that Cincinnati competes with introduced major initiatives to encourage cycling as a way to get around. Indianapolis opened the Cultural Trail, an 8-mile bike-pedestrian loop connecting five downtown districts and other trails to outlying communities. And Columbus kicked off CoGo BikeShare, a system to allow members to borrow bikes short-term for quick trips around the city.

Cincinnati’s recent improvements have been less flashy, but the city is making steady progress with improvements to its bike infrastructure.

It’s adding miles of bike lanes and mulling a new type of bike infrastructure called a cycle track along Central Parkway.

Cincinnati also hopes to introduce a bike-sharing system next spring, and nonprofit groups are working to turn the abandoned railway known as Wasson Way into a bike/pedestrian path that would connect dense residential neighborhoods with shopping centers, schools and Xavier University.

A coalition of northern suburbs is meeting to develop bike-friendly initiatives focused on recreation with transportation as a secondary goal.

The number of people who commute by bike remains small in the U.S., accounting for just over one-half of 1 percent of commutes in 2011, according the the U.S. Census’ American Communities Survey. (The numbers are based on work commutes, so don’t include errands or other trips taken by bike.)

Cincinnati is just under the national average, while Dayton leads Ohio cities with 1.4 percent of commutes done by bike.

The numbers, though, are growing quickly. Lexington had one of the biggest gains in the country from 1990 to 2011, increasing 435 percent to 1.8 percent of commutes. Cincinnati’s percentage of commuters grew by 76 percent for the same period.

Larger still are the number of people who say they want to ride their bikes more but are concerned about safety. A 2006 study by the Portland, Ore., Bureau of Transportation found four categories of attitudes toward cycling:

• Strong and fearless. Representing about one-half of 1 percent, these riders will ride anywhere and have no concerns about sharing roads with cars.

• Enthused and confident. These riders, about 5 percent, are comfortable sharing the road with cars but prefer to ride in areas dedicated to bikes, such as bike lanes.

• Interested but concerned. This group represents about 60 percent of the population. They are curious about riding and would like to ride more, but they are also worried about their own safety and would prefer paths dedicated to bikes only. Women are especially concerned about safety when riding; close to three-fourths of bike commuters are men.

• No way, no how. About a third of the Portland respondents said they had no interest in using bikes as transportation and no changes in infrastructure would persuade them.

It’s the “interested but concerned” category that bike planners are trying to woo with amenities and infrastructure, and Indianapolis’ biking facilities have become the envy of riders nationwide. The Monon Trail runs more than 15 miles from the suburb of Carmel into Indianapolis, connecting housing with schools, retail and entertainment districts. It attracts more than a million visits a year.

In Carmel, nearly $1 billion worth of private-public investment has sprung up along the trail, including the Center for the Performing Arts, condominiums, retail and commercial development, and a civic green that hosts a farmers’ market and concerts.

Near downtown, the Monon connects with the Indianapolis Cultural Trail, a $63-million bike and pedestrian path that opened this summer. It moves cyclists, runners and walkers throughout the downtown area in lanes separated from auto traffic, with public art installations and sitting areas sprinkled throughout.

A local family gave a lead gift of $15 million, with a $20.5 million federal grant and other grants and private donations kicked in.

Indianapolis officials see the improvements as a way to distinguish the city from its competition.

“As the mayor of a big city, it’s about talent attraction and business attraction, and you need to know the trends that are coming forward now,” Mayor Greg Ballard told Bicycling magazine. “So when you look at what young people are looking for, when you look at businesses who want to hire those people, you have to create that kind of city, and that’s really what we’re trying to do. I like to ride bikes – it’s not a secret in the city – but I didn’t do this because (of that). It was really about creating the culture within the city.”

At the end of July, Columbus launched CoGo, a 300-bike system that allows members to borrow bikes from 30 stations in and around downtown. For a daily fee of $6 or an annual fee of $75, users can check out a gray-and-red bike, ride it for up to 30 minutes, then return it to any station.

Unlike bike rental agencies, bike shares are for quick trips such as lunches and meetings. About half of all trips in the U.S. are 3 miles or less, and about a quarter are a mile or less, distances that are well-suited to biking.

Columbus recorded 1,000 rides in the first weekend of its program. New York and Chicago also launched bike sharing this summer, and San Francisco is set to launch one this month. Washington, D.C., started its Capital Bikeshare system in 2010, and Boston, Minneapolis and Toronto have similar systems.

Indianapolis and Cincinnati have plans to launch their own bike-sharing programs next year, along with Philadelphia and Portland. The program is the latest effort to make Cincinnati friendlier for bikes.

There are challenges here that make bike infrastructure a more daunting proposition than elsewhere. The streets are narrower than places built after the rise of the automobile and the topography is a challenge to riders unaccustomed to tackling hills.

But city planners have been making steady gains in making the city an easier place to ride. Since 2009, more than 21 miles of bike lanes have been added – with some resistance in the East End and Hyde Park neighborhoods – along with sharrows, shared-lane markings for streets too narrow for a dedicated lane.

The Department of Transportation & Engineering is considering installing a cycle track along Central Parkway for commuters from Downtown and Over-the-Rhine into Clifton, Northside and other neighborhoods. A cycle track physically separates bikes from cars with curbs, planters or pylons.

The track could run one way on both sides of the road or two-ways on one side of the road; planners are gathering feedback through early September. The Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of Governments has awarded the city a $500,000 grant for the improvements and the city has added $125,000.

Biking enthusiasts are also excited about the Wasson Way, a proposed 6.5-mile bike path along an abandoned railway from Xavier University to the Little Miami Trail in Newtown. It would give the 120,000 people who live within a mile of the trail a safe way to bike to Rookwood Pavilion, Hyde Park Plaza, Ault Park, schools and other destinations. City officials hope to use $3 million from the parking lease to buy the right-of-way from Norfolk Southern Corp.

Nine northern suburbs – Blue Ash, Glendale, Evendale, Reading, Sharonville, Wyoming, Woodlawn, Montgomery and Lockland – have partnered to form the Connecting Active Communities Coalition to promote bike facilities in their cities. While the emphasis for now is on recreational biking, GE Aviation in Evendale is participating on behalf of employees who want to bike to work.

In an era of tight budgets, improving a city’s biking infrastructure can seem frivolous. But in the race to attract more residents, jobs and economic development, biking provides a multitude of returns on a fairly small investment.

Even with spending cuts, officials should work to provide quality-of-life improvements, and making it easier for residents to travel by bike is well worth the small cost of the infrastructure it requires. ■